White House 2.0?

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


It’s no secret that Barack Obama took the White House thanks in large part to his campaign team’s Internet savvy. The interactive website, text-message organizing, YouTube channel and all the rest not only spurred people to action; they made Obama seem as accessible to them as their neighbor, their teacher, or their priest.

But campaigns are all about populism—the more people a candidate can connect with, the better. The president, by contrast, is usually cordoned off from the public and hardly ever released to take question; the Bush administration took this secrecy to an extreme. As he looks towards January, will Obama try and bridge the gap between an interactive campaign and the highly managed nature of the presidency?

Sure looks like it. Obama has already launched change.gov, a public interface for his presidency. He still has a YouTube channel, and has pledged to institute an online comment period before singing nonemergency legislation. Though Obama was less available to the press during the campaign than many reporters would have liked, as president he’s pledged to put government business online. Perhaps an overhaul of whitehouse.gov is in the works?

After eight years of dealing with a secretive, inaccessible and often combative executive, it would be more than refreshing to have the exact opposite. If Obama does it right, Americans will feel like their country is theirs again; instead of an announcer for a leader, they’ll have a mouthpiece.

UPDATE: A collection of over 60 open government groups has weighed in on Obama’s plans for transparency, offering 69 specific policy suggestions.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate